How to Become an Incompetent Chef
The complete guide to working in a restaurant kitchen
After years spent working in kitchens, I’ve picked up a few tips that might help you in your culinary journey.
Ignore the Menu
The menu is more of a suggestion than a rule. Just make sure that whatever you send out looks vaguely like what the customer ordered.
Forget premium ingredients. Ignore those “local and organic” promises. You’re not feeding food critics — you’re feeding people who can’t tell the difference between lamb and chicken.
You’d be amazed at what customers will eat if it’s plated nicely. They’ll happily pay for salmon pâté made from fish food or pasta that’s made from semolina. So long as you drizzle it with olive oil or shove something green on the side.
Most palates are long dead, killed by bad coffee and supermarket sandwiches. If someone claims to taste the difference between organic and non-organic produce, they are lying. Especially if it’s smothered in a cheap sugary sauce.
Feed people what they want, not what they think they want. And if they complain, pour them a glass of cheap white wine and tell them it's Champagne.
“On the house!”
Forget Food Hygiene
Anyone who thinks a kitchen is a temple of hygiene is deluded. Anyone who thinks their food that arrives on their table is untouched should work in a restaurant.
Kitchens are filthy places staffed by the tired, the unclean, the sick, and the hungover. People who just want to get the day over with as quickly as possible.
Hygiene and cleanliness are not top of their list, and rank below “don’t set yourself on fire.”
Believe me — I’ve been there.
Be Late
Head chefs hate lateness. They loathe it. Nothing winds them up more.
Which is why there’s a certain joy in sitting in a bar when you should be at work, knowing your head chef is having a meltdown.
Then walk in an hour late.
He might shout, he might be angry, but he won’t fire you. What’s he going to do, run the kitchen on his own when every table is full?
Just remember, rage is short-lived. A bad review on Google lasts a lifetime.
Don’t Be Scared of the Microwave
Ever heard of a customer complaining that their food is too hot?
Their fish and chips might be at 1000 degrees because the commi chef left it in the microwave for 10 minutes. But they can’t complain that it’s too cold.
Microwaves are there for a reason. They are there to make everyone’s life in a restaurant easier, from the dishwasher to the waiter.
Use them.
Worship the Plongeur
Last but not least: respect the KP. The kitchen porter. The dishwasher. The lowest-paid, hardest-working person in the building.
They’re lower than the toilet cleaner. Lower than the rats behind the fridge. But without them, everything collapses.
The KP keeps the wheels turning with cracked hands, scrubbing the pans you just cremated your “special” in.
Even the most unhinged chef knows better than to mess with the KP. No KP, no service.
You can show up late, you can ignore the hygiene rules, you can run on pure fury. But never mess with the plongeur. They’re the glue holding the entire filthy machine together.
Remember it.
(Disclaimer: If you follow these rules, you’ll probably get fired.)
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I see you decided to go for the "How to" titles...
That's your best joke so far.